Friday, July 19, 2002

"The Text Encoding Initiative invites proposals for the development and delivery of training courses and materials to be recognized by the TEI. We invite interested parties to contact us or submit proposals in writing that will meet the training needs of the community. We are committed to working with one or more parties to help develop the proposals so that they can be certified by the Text Encoding Initiative."

FOS News broght this to my attention. The 25 questions will help the NHPRC set priorities.

The State Archives Department of the Minnesota Historical Society is managing an effort to revisit and analyze the electronic records research agenda currently guiding the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

More than a rulebook for generating your own markup, XML is part of a family of technologies that work together in powerful ways. Eisenberg demonstrates some of that power by creating an XML-based markup language from scratch and transforming it for a variety of formats, using nothing but his noggin and some off-the-shelf tools.

Next week I'll be attending the Summer Workshop for Distance Learning Librarians. I'd love to hear any suggestions on how distance affects cataloging. My initial assumption is that good complete cataloging is more important in a distance environment. The user cannot easily scan the shelves in an area. Nor can they pick up an item and flip through to see if it what they need. TOC's, abstracts, references to reviews and links become more important. Any other thoughts?

Since I'll be in class all day and I expect readings in the evening, postings here may be made less often.

This guide introduces the reader to OSS and how it could benefit libraries, and illustrates this with a variety of library projects that have both used and developed Open Source Software. Includes practical information on installation of the software and links to additional resources.

One of the chapters is "Managing MARC with Open Source Software" by Kevin Clarke.

Wednesday, July 17, 2002

The IFLA Section on Cataloguing's ISBD Review Group is pleased to announce publication of the 2002 Version of the International Standard Bibliographic Description for Monographic Publications (ISBD(M)). The document is available in PDF format on IFLANET. This version incorporates changes necessary to make the provisions of this ISBD consistent with the "optionality" features described in IFLA's Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), published in 1998.

In general FRBR produced recommendations to make "optional" certain data elements hitherto considered "mandatory". In the new version of ISBD(M), inclusion of a data element is considered "mandatory" in all cases for certain data elements, and in other cases is considered "mandatory" when necessary for identification of the publication being described or otherwise considered important to users of a bibliography or a catalogue. To facilitate the application of the practices stipulated, ISBD(M) designates particular data elements as optional, i.e. a cataloguing agency is free to choose to include or exclude these elements. The policy is further explained within the document at 0.1.3, and a review of the Outline provided at paragraph 0.3.2 will reveal which data elements are optional.

The 2002 revision of the ISBD(M) will be published only on the Internet because the ISBD Review Group views it as an interim document subject to further review and revision in the near term. This continued attention to its provisions will be undertaken in an effort to take into consideration changes to national and multi-national cataloguing codes resulting from the need to adjust practices to fit the evolution of publications that has occurred in recent years -- in particular, the emergence of electronic resources. The Review Group is hopeful that the investigations and rule changes resulting from these code revision activities will facilitate its efforts to maintain the currency of the ISBDs as well.

With the approval of the Board of ALA's Reference User Services Association (RUSA), the Library of Congress has begun adding to its catalog records the annotations for the sites selected annually by the RUSA Machine Assisted Reference Section (MARS), Best Free Web Sites Committee. The lists, which have been compiled since 1999, appear in the fall issue of the RUSA Quarterly and on the ALA RUSA MARS website. Usually, 25-30 sites are selected each year. The Library of Congress project to add the annotations has been undertaken under the auspices of the Library's Bibliographic Enrichment Advisory Team (BEAT), a cross-departmental R & D group whose mission includes enriching the content of Library of Congress bibliographic records. The project follows a similar on-going undertaking to add annotations to the catalog records for the titles included in the annual list of print Outstanding Reference Sources produced by the ALA RUSA Collection Development and Evaluation Section (CODES). Additional information about BEAT projects is available from the BEAT web site.

Tuesday, July 16, 2002

MARC21 and AARC are both not as clear as they could be on some topics. That is why there are the large binders with the LCRIs in cataloging departments. On a couple of these topics IFLA has provided guidance, it might be useful to review their guidelines as well as the Library of Congress Rule Interpertations.

Guidelines for Using UNIMARC for Component Parts The following guideline indicates how the UNIMARC format is to be used when creating records for two types of component parts: journal articles and articles in books. The focus here is on articles, although the treatment of other components that are one part of a larger physical piece would follow the same model.

Guidelines for Using UNIMARC for Microforms The following Guidelines indicate how the UNIMARC format is to be used when creating records for items which appear in the original hard copy publication and microreproduction forms. The focus here is on microforms, although the treatment of different kinds of reproduction would follow the same model.

Monday, July 15, 2002

There is another PURL service available U-ID. This is a for profit organization. Seems to me the OCLC PURL system would be a better option for libraries. There is the need for these services. I just wonder why the OCLC service has not caught on more widely. The service there is free and so is the software to start your own service. When it first appeared I thought state libraries would establish PURL servers for their library systems and scholarly organizations would do the same for their fields. Hasn't happened.

The updated proposals and discussion paper from the ALA Annual 2002 meetings of the MARC Advisory Committee are now available from the MARC Web site. They include a brief review of the discussion and status of the paper.